From the Kodály Envoy, Summer 2008. Copyright © 2008 OAKE: The Organization of American Kodály Educators. Reprinted by permission. No additional use without written permission.
I want to publicly thank the OAKE Board for supporting this project through the OAKE Leaf Fund. Investing in our future teachers is critically important and perhaps the best way to “promote Kodály’s concept of ‘Music for Everyone’ through the improvement of music education in schools.” Please know that your investment in our students will have great returns. With appreciation – Warren Henry, University of North Texas.
Kodály in Context
As a university instructor, and past Chair of Music Education at the University of North Texas, I always envisioned a course that would be truly collaborative in nature, and one that would include an international component designed to “humanize” the major figures in music education and to explore the roots of their teaching practices. This year, my vision was realized with a newly developed course called “Kodály in Context,” a 16-week class that used Kodály practices as the hub around which all other topics were explored. The course was collaborative in nature and purposefully designed to break away from the “egg crate” approach to teaching. In other words, the course worked very hard to integrate performance, history, music history, pedagogy, and musicianship.
Collaboration
Our course started in August, 2007 with nine enrolled students, most of whom did not know each other at the start of the semester. While I was listed as the teacher-of-record, there were three additional teachers, each of whom played a very distinct role. One was a colleague of mine at UNT whose area of specialization was Intercultural Competence, an emerging field in music education that suggests that before persons can come to some kind of common ground with a culture, they have to develop an awareness of their own beliefs, values, and attitudes, and how this might impact interactions with others. This served as a common theme throughout the course, with particular emphasis while we were in Hungary, and illuminated students’ thinking about their roles as future teachers in diverse classrooms.
The additional two instructors were public school educators, one a certified Kodály specialist and the other a certified Orff specialist. It should be noted that we also had a Gordon specialist, which gave the class an interesting mix of educational approaches and led to fascinating, respectful discussions on music teaching and learning. While Kodály teaching was always the primary emphasis, I felt that integrating the ideas of Orff and Gordon would allow students to make comparisons and “learn what something is by learning what it is not.”
Our collaborative efforts also extended into the Music History area. Because of the nature of this course and its international component, the History area at UNT allowed our course to count as one of the required Music History electives. Therefore, using Kodály as the central theme, we integrated Hungarian history, Hungarian folk music, and Hungarian classical music (largely Kodály, Bartόk and Liszt) into the course. We invited several guests to class, one of whom was a UNT graduate student from Hungary. She taught us about Hungarian history and shared highly personal stories of her life under communist rule. Interestingly, her mother was our tour guide in Budapest. We also invited one of our history faculty members to class, who gave a fascinating lecture on the “Three Bs: Beethoven, Bartόk, and Benny.” Yes, we heard a recording of Bartόk accompanying Benny Goodman! We also invited a former UNT student and Grammy nominated pianist to perform Liszt’s music. In an intimate setting of just 9 students and 4 faculty members, we heard virtuoso playing from a performer who normally plays in concert halls throughout the world. Follow up classes led to some very thoughtful discussions about utilizing community members and what responsibilities we have as teachers to give back to the community.
Travel to Hungary
The actual trip to Hungary far exceeded our expectations and offered learning opportunities that would not have been possible in a regular classroom setting. I can only offer some highlights, which I hope will give a sense of how powerful this trip was for our students. One highlight happened on our first day with an all-day private tour of Budapest, led by our graduate student’s mother. She took us to such places as Hero’s Square, Parliament, and Matthias Church, but the greatest impact of the tour came from her stories growing up in Hungary and the brutality of communist rule. For all of us, this part of our world’s history was no longer something from a book. It was real and being told to us by someone with first-hand accounts.
We spent two days in Kecskemét at the Kodály Pedagogical Institute, where our instructors took us through rigorous solfege training and gave us a sense of the scope and sequence of Kodály’s approach. Their teaching was exemplary and did not go unnoticed by our students. Peter Erdei, former director of the Institute, spoke to us and offered his perspectives on how Kodály teaching has changed, where it might be headed, and how we will need to adjust to a changing world. We spent two days visiting schools and were inspired by the students, the teachers, and their incredible musicianship.
After our time in Kecskemét, we returned to Budapest to take in museums, shops (of course!), and to experience the musical life of the city. We attended an all Brahms concert at the Liszt Academy with the Hungarian Radio Choir and Men’s Chorus. The performance setting was overwhelmingly beautiful, particularly in light of the history of the Academy. We also attended a concert of R. Strauss, Goldmark, and Elgar in Budapest’s new Palace of the Arts, a state-of-the-art performance facility. These musical experiences were very powerful. As one student remarked, “The concerts opened my eyes. Everything suddenly made sense to me, and I finally understood why I want to teach people to enjoy this.”
What cannot be adequately described here are the informal conversations with individuals or groups of students on such subjects as culture, teaching, Kodály, excellence, American education, and the purpose of our roles as teachers. Throughout our eight days in Hungary, and the weeks after our return, we had numerous conversations that made us either question or defend our beliefs about education. Ultimately, we all become more thoughtful practitioners. From a personal perspective, the conclusion of the course left me questioning my own practices in regard to teacher education: Do we need to rethink the “egg crate” approach? Am I keeping up with the new generation of students and their way of thinking? What do students need to get from a music teacher education program?
Student Perspectives
We are in an age of accountability and are increasingly asked to provide data to demonstrate learning. What the faculty and students learned from this trip cannot be reported in a number, and it could be argued that we will not truly know the impact this course had on the students’ teaching careers for many years to come.
However, based on their insights below, I think it is evident that our students completed the course thinking differently, which one could argue is the purpose of education. Here are some sample statements the students shared with us at the end of the semester:
- What impacted me is when our music teacher in Hungary talked about how we can impact our corner of the world, and it will spread. And in a country that is so much more disjointed than Hungary, it gives you hope. What we do is important and matters.
- I’ve learned that we aren’t going to be any good as teachers unless we can do this well.
- My perspective towards others has changed, and the most shocking thing that I’ve learned is that how sub-par my musicianship skills are compared to the things I can already do musically (I’m a performance major). But the basic things kids should be able to do well, I can’t do well.
- There is so much more that kids can learn, and that puts a tremendous amount of responsibility on me to not just be a teacher, but to be that person who brings these things into the classroom.
- I would have to say the biggest impact on me was the museum (House of Terror). It brought everything home. I was struck by how musical their culture is and how music can bring you up. In the airport coming home, something switched in me. I felt like I had a perspective; I felt older.
- This semester was about broadening my thoughts and broadening my mind. I’m a pretty straight and narrow person, but not anymore.
You think you have it all figured out, and then you find it’s not even in the same playing field.
- This class was the best experience of my life and has opened my eyes and raised some serious questions about what kind of teacher I want to be.
I want to again thank OAKE for their generosity. The investment in these students has had, and will continue to have, a significant return, both in terms of their commitment to Kodály inspired teaching, but also in terms of their growth as teachers and individuals. On behalf of the instructors and students, thank you for supporting this initiative.